Broadband suppliers and E mail addresses
Discussion
I have finally investigated something I should have done years ago and realise that I am being done up like a kipper by Virgin Media - paying around double the price they themselves are actually advertising for Broadband/TV/landline.
I would like to dump them completely, but Mrs Foss and I have ancient Ntlworld e mail addresses, linked to all sorts of things and containing 20+ years of history.
It seems that (unlike mobile phone numbers) these are not transferable, so do I have to keep a low level broadband account going with VM to keep them operational?
There used to be things called pst files that magically retained all e mails, but these don’t seem to exist any more?
I would like to dump them completely, but Mrs Foss and I have ancient Ntlworld e mail addresses, linked to all sorts of things and containing 20+ years of history.
It seems that (unlike mobile phone numbers) these are not transferable, so do I have to keep a low level broadband account going with VM to keep them operational?
There used to be things called pst files that magically retained all e mails, but these don’t seem to exist any more?
https://community.virginmedia.com/discussions/emai... Is relevant, and includes a suggestion on how to export emails
What e-mail software do you? PST files still exist in the Outlook world.
You could get lucky and find your e-mail address keep working if you cancelled entirely, but there is a comment on the O2 forum that Virgin will delete the addresses 90 days after leaving. I also read another thread that Virgin were slack on cleaning up mailboxes from former customers but started to have a purge last year so may well hotter on this now.
https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Other-Products-and-S...
Do you have backup e-mail accounts setup with one of the usual suspects like Outlook/Hotmail, GMail etc? Worth setting up now if you don't and can start to think how many logins and registrations you'd have to update with a new address...
You could get lucky and find your e-mail address keep working if you cancelled entirely, but there is a comment on the O2 forum that Virgin will delete the addresses 90 days after leaving. I also read another thread that Virgin were slack on cleaning up mailboxes from former customers but started to have a purge last year so may well hotter on this now.
https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Other-Products-and-S...
Do you have backup e-mail accounts setup with one of the usual suspects like Outlook/Hotmail, GMail etc? Worth setting up now if you don't and can start to think how many logins and registrations you'd have to update with a new address...
Get a Gmail address. Go through your last 6 months of emails and change any accounts you want to still keep to the Gmail address. Go into your address book and send an email from your new Gmail to everyone you want to have your new address. Anything you haven't used for 6 months probably doesn't matter, if you are really concerned go back the last 13 months.
Then do not have an email address connected to your broadband supplier.
Then do not have an email address connected to your broadband supplier.
In theory if you leave Virgin your wife will lose her account after 90 days, but then Virgin were going to kill the ntlworld.com domain last year and under pressure have delayed that - note delayed, not aborted, so potentially within the next year or two your wife will still lose her account.
As others have said/suggested, it is worth getting an independent account such as gmail or hotmail/outlook and migrating to that though it is a right pain and even some 18-20 years back it took me months and even then missed a few - I still occasionally find legacy accounts I need to log on to tied to my old demon email address.
Side note - the advertised prices you are seeing for Virgin will be the discounted one for the first X number of months of subscription. You might be able to get the same deal if you get through to their cancellation department.
As others have said/suggested, it is worth getting an independent account such as gmail or hotmail/outlook and migrating to that though it is a right pain and even some 18-20 years back it took me months and even then missed a few - I still occasionally find legacy accounts I need to log on to tied to my old demon email address.
Side note - the advertised prices you are seeing for Virgin will be the discounted one for the first X number of months of subscription. You might be able to get the same deal if you get through to their cancellation department.
Split it out.
Get a Gmail account and set a strong password and enable MFA.
Get all the stuff that will mess your life up if it stops working transferred so it is registered to this email address.
Work on getting the other stuff transferred.
You can export the email you have so you can keep it - keeping the emails is separate to keeping the email address.
But this is why it's usually a bad idea to use ISP specific email - it can either keep you tied to the ISP or paying stupid amounts just to keep an email address.
Get a Gmail account and set a strong password and enable MFA.
Get all the stuff that will mess your life up if it stops working transferred so it is registered to this email address.
Work on getting the other stuff transferred.
You can export the email you have so you can keep it - keeping the emails is separate to keeping the email address.
But this is why it's usually a bad idea to use ISP specific email - it can either keep you tied to the ISP or paying stupid amounts just to keep an email address.
judas said:
the-norseman said:
My mate still has his old ntlworld email address and uses it most days and hes not been with Virgin for years.
^^ this. Left Virgin three (?) ago and still have access to my email accounts
butchstewie said:
Split it out.
Get a Gmail account and set a strong password and enable MFA.
Get all the stuff that will mess your life up if it stops working transferred so it is registered to this email address.
Work on getting the other stuff transferred.
You can export the email you have so you can keep it - keeping the emails is separate to keeping the email address.
But this is why it's usually a bad idea to use ISP specific email - it can either keep you tied to the ISP or paying stupid amounts just to keep an email address.
Definitely good advice, but these e mail addresses went back to a time when the ISP specific implications weren’t understood.Get a Gmail account and set a strong password and enable MFA.
Get all the stuff that will mess your life up if it stops working transferred so it is registered to this email address.
Work on getting the other stuff transferred.
You can export the email you have so you can keep it - keeping the emails is separate to keeping the email address.
But this is why it's usually a bad idea to use ISP specific email - it can either keep you tied to the ISP or paying stupid amounts just to keep an email address.
To a much more limited extent I also had to deal with things related to work e mail addresses when I retired. I must have had a work e mail long before I had a private one.
Along similar lines I had only ever had a work mobile phone number when I retired a couple of years ago. I managed to persuade my employer (a large multinational) to let me keep the number. In the process, I discovered that some very senior managers of a similar age to me, were in the same boat.
It’s easy to get left behind, even if you think you are fairly savvy…
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